“The Maison Grenelle!” he said.
There was no answer, not even the slightest movement at his side.
“Isn’t it?” he asked and he turned.
Hanaud had not even heard him. He was gazing also towards the Maison Grenelle with the queerest look upon his face; a look with which Jim was familiar in some sort of association, but which for a moment or two he could not define. It was not an expression of amazement. On the other hand interest was too weak a word. Suddenly Jim Frobisher understood and comprehension brought with it a sense of discomfort. Hanaud’s look, very bright and watchful and more than a little inhuman, was just the look of a good retriever dog when his master brings out a gun.
Jim looked again at the high ridge of the house. The slates were broken at intervals by little gabled windows, but at none of them could he see a figure. From none of them a signal was waved.
“What is it that you are looking at?” asked Jim in perplexity and then with a touch of impatience. “You see something, I’m sure.”
Hanaud heard his companion at last. His face changed in a moment, lost its rather savage vigilance, and became the face of a buffoon.
“Of course I see something. Always I see something. Am I not Hanaud? Ah, my friend, the responsibility of being Hanaud! Aren’t you fortunate to be without it? Pity me! For the Hanauds must see something everywhere—even when there is nothing to see. Come!”
He bustled out of the sunlight on that high platform into the dark turret of the staircase. The two men descended the steps and came out again into the semicircle of the Place d’Armes.
“Well!” said Hanaud and then “Yes,” as though he had some little thing to say and was not quite sure whether he would say it. Then he compromised. “You shall take a Vermouth with me before you go to your luncheon,” he said.
“I should be late if I did,” Frobisher replied.
Hanaud waved the objection aside with a shake of his outstretched forefinger.
“You have plenty of time, Monsieur. You shall take a Vermouth with me, and you will still reach the Maison Grenelle before Mademoiselle Harlowe. I say that, Hanaud,” he said superbly, and Jim laughed and consented.
“I shall plead your vanity as my excuse when I find her and Ann Upcott half through their meal.”
A café stands at the corner of the street of Liberty and the Place d’Armes, with two or three little tables set out on the pavement beneath an awning. They sat down at one of them, and over the Vermouth, Hanaud was once more upon the brink of some recommendation or statement.
“You see—” he began and then once more ran away. “So you have been five times upon the top of the Mont Blanc!” he said. “From Chamonix?”
“Once,” Jim replied. “Once from the Col du Géant by the Brenva glacier. Once by the Dôme route. Once from the Brouillard glacier. And the last time by the Mont Mandit.”
Hanaud listened with genuine friendliness and said:
“You tell me things which are interesting and very new to me,” he said warmly. “I am grateful, Monsieur.”
“On the other hand,” Jim answered dryly, “you, Monsieur, tell me very little. Even what you brought me to this café to say, you are going to keep to yourself. But for my part I shall not be so churlish. I am going to tell you what I think.”
“Yes?”
“I think we have missed the way.”
“Oh?”
Hanaud selected a cigarette from his bundle in its bright blue wrapping.
“You will perhaps think me presumptuous in saying so.”
“Not the least little bit in the world,” Hanaud replied seriously. “We of the Police are liable in searching widely to overlook the truth under our noses. That is our danger. Another angle of view—there is nothing more precious. I am all attention.”
Jim Frobisher drew his chair closer to the round table of iron and leaned his elbows upon it.
“I think there is one question in particular which we must answer if we are to discover whether Mrs. Harlowe was murdered, and if so by whom.”
Hanaud nodded.
“I agree,” he said slowly. “But I wonder whether we have the same question in our minds.”
“It is a question which we have neglected. It is this—Who put back the Professor’s treatise on Strophanthus in its place upon the bookshelf in the library, between midday yesterday and this morning.”
Hanaud struck another of his abominable matches, and held it in the shelter of his palm until the flame shone. He lit his cigarette and took a few puffs at it.
“No doubt that question is important,” he admitted, although in rather an offhand way. “But it is not mine. No. I think there is another more important still. I think if we could know why the door of the treasure-room, which had been locked since Simon Harlowe’s death, was unlocked on the night of the twenty-seventh of April, we should be very near to the whole truth of this dark affair. But,” and he flung out his hands, “that baffles me.”
Jim left him sitting at the table and staring moodily upon the pavement, as if he hoped to read the answer there.
XII
The Breaking of the Seals
A few minutes later Jim Frobisher had to admit that Hanaud guessed very luckily. He would not allow that it was more than a guess. Monsieur Hanaud might be a thorough little Mr. Know-All; but no insight, however brilliant, could inform him of so accidental a circumstance. But there the fact was. Frobisher did arrive at the Maison Grenelle, to his great discomfort, before Betty Harlowe. He had loitered
